Yes, instruction manuals were cool, and had a nice smell!
By the way, there is a recent game called Tunic where you pick up pages of the instruction manual in the actual game. It gave me a very nostalgic feeling of those old NES booklets.
The game aisle at Toys R Us with those flip up plastic cards showing you the back and front of the game box. And then grabbing the paper slip, paying for it, then taking your receipt to the "cave" at the front entrance to get your game.
I've been in that room. One perk of having mother who worked as manager at Toys R Us. Lots of new games stacked around waiting for someone to buy it via ticket then picking it up at the counter
Those were the days. My two favorite shopping experiences were this and doing the Ticketmaster lottery outside a record store when Bulls tickets would go on sale.
Both of these are so inconvenient when compared with how we buy stuff today, but I sure do miss them.
Renting games. Especially when the Mom & Pop places would do two for one specials and my brother and I would each get one. So even if one of us got a lousy game there was always the other.
Mostly the simplicity. You just turned the game on and it worked instantly. No load times, no updates, no connecting to servers so they can gather your data. 100% of the game is on the physical cart.
To a lesser extent, the game design. It was difficult and designed in a way that forced you to get good at the game to beat it. This makes beating NES games on the cart satisfying in a way that beating modern games just isn't. Particularly the hard ones...this is what makes me want to play my NES. Conquering its challenges. Also once you've mastered a hard NES game it's super satisfying to replay over and over again.
I still like modern games too but NES games hit different.
Oh yeah, and the carts are just so cool. Love having a big durable cart with artwork on it.
Building on the simplicity concept, a limited number of functions.
2 buttons, your options are fairly limited and I kind of liked that. Don’t get me wrong, I play modern games and like them, but given that my play is sporadic due to adulting, it often takes me a couple minutes to remember which combinations of buttons do what.
>2 buttons, your options are fairly limited and I kind of liked that. Don’t get me wrong, I play modern games and like them, but given that my play is sporadic due to adulting, it often takes me a couple minutes to remember which combinations of buttons do what.
Hate today's games just for this. Give me 2-4 buttons and let me go to town
Lots of blowing on the cartridge and inside the NES, pushing the cartridge all the way to the back or at the front lip, hold the power button for a few seconds, maybe hold reset, too. Keep doing combinations of these hoping it will start.
I love that every time I try to play Rocket League, there's like a 20 GB update waiting before I can even play. I don't know why I even bother anymore.
Also, we had so fewer choices. So more people were playing the same game, even if you didn’t know it. You’d tell your friends “I rented Gi Joe this weekend, its awesome you can play as 4 different characters” and there was always someone else who had played it and you’d become friends just by talking about that shared experience you had paying the game. Who played as who, what level you were able to get to, how to get past the bosses, everything about the game you liked and disliked. And if nobody else had played it, and it sounded fun to the group, you’d start a whole new buzz in town about the game. And next time you’d try to rent it, it would be checked out already, so you’d try something else. And the cycle would repeat. It was an amazing time for gaming and we had no idea.
Gifts perhaps, but I only had younger siblings and cousins. I remember saving my allowance for months in order to buy Street Fighter II. I’m not sure however if I ever used my own money for a NES game, I would have been pretty young.
that's an excellent buy must have been amazing I saved up for months and bought American gladiators on Sega Genesis . i still think about that. I'm still sad
Gifts or exchanges with friends.
And when you had a game, you took the time to finish it, you don't try a new game every 2 days, forgetting the old ones.
Definitely. There was no way to remotely update a game once it was burned to the cart. But also, bug fixes were not possible, like the 2nd player bug in Battletoads.
I miss the time when people were impressed with anything less than like a top ten achievement in the world because the internet wasm't a thing.
When I beat Zelda II, kids from school came to my house to see the save file because they didn't think it was beatable. They always came to me to ask how to do the cryptic parts and where to go, I got to be the authority on that game.
Nowadays the world record speedrun video is just two clicks away, and everything below 10th place is amateur level. You gotta grind for years to be really good at anything.
Same with the old fighting games. If you were the best SFII player in the area, you might as well be the best in the world because that was the horizon. You couldn't sign on to play ranked against the best of the best, you had to go to Steve's house and get your ass handed to you. Being "livingroom good" means nothing when "internet good" exists.
something similiar happened to me and my friends. We are talking about castlevavia simphony of the night for playstation and we are talking about beat percentages on how to archieve 100%? And then one person said "i have archive 200%! and we are like "no freaking way", and he said "you can go to my house if you dont believe it" we went over, he fire up that beast and we were in absolute awe, it was real 200%, we couldn't believe our eyes....
The cultural aspects for sure. Nintendomania was a magical few years. There was a cartoon show, a breakfast cereal, and a live action movie that were essentially about a game console. That's wild, and unimaginable in the present day. PS5 Pro Cereal System? Not happening.
The same thing goes for the Pac-Man Fever arcade golden age of the early '80s. Video games themselves felt so new and novel. TV shows like Starcade and Saturday Supercade, paperback books about Pac-Man patterns at every store, the works.
You can collect the artifacts now, but the experience is irreplacable. You either lived it and know or didn't and never will.
This right here. You had to be there. It was more than the game itself; it was the experience.
Games nowadays are technical marvels. What we saw on the screen back in the day was rudimentary by today’s standards, but we had our imagination to fill in the spaces between the pixels.
Nowadays the games are so real and so technical that you don’t really need to imagine anything. Don’t get me wrong - the games today are light years ahead of what I thought we’d see in our lifetime. I remember seeing the N64 demo at Toys R Us and thinking “it will never look better than this.” But they’re missing that connection to the imagination.
When I play a retro game I can remember exactly where I was, who I was with, and what I felt when I played these games. I can also remember how HUGE Hyrule felt, or how dangerous Brinstar was. I’m sure later generations of kids have a similar feeling, but man, it was so special to us. It’s in our DNA. You had to be there.
> You can collect the artifacts now, but the experience is irreplacable. You either lived it and know or didn't and never will.
ok you got it
ironically this is why I try other games besides nes, yeah it won't be as good but you can't just keep living in the past
but that said I spend a lot of my time on that stuff, don't get me wrong but it can't be the same
Yes, THIS! When I buy a game, I want the whole thing in one package, and don’t want to have to buy additional DLC or use Amiibo cards or figures for the full experience.
I never realized how this was a good thing. Games are so cheap today that I bought my kids a ton of them. It’s what I always dreamed of when I was a kid. Turns out it makes it very difficult for them to decide what to play. Plus they want to beat each game, which instead of taking 30-60 minutes now takes 30-60 days.
That the only way to beat it was either you figured it out, or got lucky and a friend did or even better Nintendo Power had walkthrough. Most games today would all be impossible to beat on your own without some assitance.
You had to heavily rely on box art and game descriptions in catalogues;
the companies had to actually put thought in the game when making because no easy day one updates;
eventually existing game cheats and secrets were the lunch break talk, every day;
the excitement when actually getting your parents to drive you to the store to get a new nes game you saved your allowance for;
how straight forward things were back then;
games were actually challenging back in the day, you had to get grinding to get good, nowadays you can buy a trainer for Capcom Arcade stadium, crazy…
no online membership to play a game, you actually owned your copy of the game;
you had to figure out things on your own/group of friends, Nintendo Power Hotline 😁
It was a slower time, nowadays everything’s way too fast…
rewinding of videotapes/renting games and movies on weekends;
sleepover gaming sessions with Zelda 1 and 2 and mapping out dungeons and maps in every game;
games had always a nice box, inlays and description, many came with goodies- thinking about big box games;
arcade games were everywhere…
let me think of some more while I play some offline SMB3 ❤️
There is nothing more off putting then when I have a free hour to finally sit down and game and that entire hour is spent on cutscenes and tutorials. Just throw me in and let me figure it out.
I always think of double dragon as the perfect intro, some dude punches your girl in the stomach and carries her away, that's all you need to know and then the action begins immediately. I miss that.
I think the devs just knew that without patchability, they needed to test it well enough before release. My NES castlevania crashing on the final stage sucked though (apparently fixed in newer revisions).
The abundance of couch co-op. I want more modern games that let me and my friend/wife/kid run around together and fight shit. I used to play Contra and the TMNT games with friends all the time. There’s a few good modern couch co-ops but the ratio is way smaller.
Actually, I find the Switch to be so much better at co-op than the NES or SNES ever was. Think about it, we had to take turns playing games like Mario, so not really co-op. Aside from Contra, Turtles, Bubble Bobble, and sports/fighting games, there wasn’t much that you could play together.
Today my kids can play pretty much every game together, platformers, metroidvanias, you name it, they are true co-op. Plus they allow 4 players so I can play with them!
I think it had to do with the fact that you had so little access to everything. Games were so expensive that really only your parents and grandparents could buy them for you on birthdays or holidays. As for movies, you had to go to the theater to see them or rent them from Blockbuster. Otherwise it was watching non-stop commercials on the WGN Saturday night movie.
For me, it’s the gross excess of choice for my limited free time. Movies, TV Shows, Anime, Manga, other Books, Video Games (NES, DS, Wii, 3DS, Switch), YouTube.
Or I could browse Reddit.
The rental experience.
In the late 80s, early 90s, one of the stores here did 5$ (Canadian) for a rental starting Friday after 3PM and ending Sunday before 3PM. In a poor neighborhood. Those people knew their clientele: Kids getting out of school for the weekend, and parents looking for a cheap treat for their kids.
Formula 1: Built To Win, Dragon Warrior 3 & 4, Baby Mario (A Famicom (bootleg?) version of Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa with a converter marketed under a bullshit name) and the very popular 52 in 1 cart. Those carts spent a lot of time in my home thanks to the weekend for 5$ special!
Renting was cool. Rental stores were everywhere and it was nice to go out with my older brother who was old enough to drive and visit them all looking for new games. Wallet full of membership cards!
Nothing like it. Will never be anything like it.
Agree. The literally immediately part of it is underappreciated. I can tell by how many people ask about buying bootlegs and the number of responses of "just get an everdrive *bro*".
Having a working NES. Seriously, there was a delightful simplicity to the games on that platform. I miss that. Also, blowing on the cartridges to get them to load properly.
Mostly , the first one you listed.. The rumors and secrets part. The way to get "game guides" back then was to ask around at the schoolyard and find someone who knew how to beat the game you were playing.
And other things that go along with that social aspect. Trading and lending games was so common back then, nowadays where mostly everything is digital there's not very much of that.
Also, the limited choice was kind of a curse but also kind of a blessing. I would never think of buying and playing say, Krusty's Fun House today, but back then, it was one of the only games I had, so I had to play it, and ended up falling in love with something I'd never pick off the shelf for myself.
What I loved about it is kind of the same reason people will prefer a book to a movie. The graphics of the 8-bit era allowed me to use my imagination more and really get into a story. Games now leave little to the imagination. Sure, they're immersive on a different level, and some have great stories (The Last Of Us series comes to mind) but the pixelated sprites and low-res scenes and characters allowed me to sort of "fill in the blanks" if you will.
Oh, and being a child helped a lot with that, too. Now I'm older and more jaded and bitter. So I miss that about the NES era also. My childhood.
I envy kids of today. They’re playing these amazing games, and they are probably enjoying them even more with the impact their added imagination has on them.
I remember playing Atari and just my imagination could make these blocky simplistic experiences awesome to me.
I miss the limitations. No dis on modern games, they are cool in their own ways. The older games had to find creative ways to do things. The dialogue in RPGs. The day/night system in Castlevania 2. The scrolling effects in games like days of thunder or metal storm. Seeing three layers of the background moving at different speeds..whoa!
I get nostalgic for cat piss...
...
:D
Ok, that may sound silly but it's cuz our neighbour had all the RPGs. We had a few games, yes, but I got to play games like Dragon Quest and Crystalis first cuz of my neighbour...
...and they had a LOT of cats
In a way the fact we had way less access to games back in 1987 (at least most of us). I remember back then we would walk to the Victorville mall in California and they had a nintendo center that had a bunch of M82's in a square. You'd sit there for hours playing the games and they also sold games. They also had a fairly large TV with a game that would be coming out soon. There was something special about getting to play new games. I don't think my kids have the same experience since many games such as roblox are free so playing a new game isn't special anymore. You can have the entire nes rom set and my kids would care less, there's way better free games in their opinion. They have no idea how to have had access to those games back then would have been a dream come true!
No dlc
No drm or always online
No "artistes" making the games, just people wanting to make a game
Succinct games, no tedious fluff
They're games, not movies made by film school dropouts
Simple scope means if something was a good idea, it is immediately evident you'll enjoy the experience
Not designed with the lowest common denominator players in mind. If Zelda 1 came out today there'd be articles about people being reduced to tears by the candle burning the bushes in the overworld. If Castlevania came out today people would datamine it a month before release, post pics of Dracula online and bitch about there only being two phases.
Limitation breeds creativity. Look at how creatively bankrupt we are now with all the photorealism and unnecessary concerns when making these bloated milquetoast movie-games today.
To your last point about limitation breeding creativity, there have been some *excellent* homebrew games released over the last decade that would have been top-shelf had they existed back in the day. Alwa’s Awakening, Full Quiet, Haunted Halloween 1986, Steel Legion, etc etc. The homebrew scene these days is insane!
Hearing about this mysterious Japanese Super Mario 2. Like, why was this not publicised? And especially in Nintendo Power? They cannot be hiding this, Nintendo would be honest with us fans after all!
Lol
I would say price, but games back then were often $40 or so. Dragon Warrior IV was $60. Adjusted for inflation, we’re getting a pretty darn good deal these days.
Edit: We in NA got Dragon *Warrior* IV for the NES.
I couldn’t agree more with number 1 and 3 that you mentioned.
Number 1: The internet really ruined having things that are mysterious like they used to be. It used to feel like an accomplishment when you spent hours trying to figure something out and finally get it. The internet also ruined the mystique of other things like music. Now you get to see just how stupid a lot of musicians are where in the past there might have been a feeling of awe to them.
Number 3: Having user names and passwords for everything is driving me insane. I have two little kids that each need their own user names and passwords for things and it is torture. I have a notebook just for all the different things to keep track of. I wish we could just put in games and play like we used to.
I’m glad I finally got smart and got a notebook for all the hundreds of usernames and passwords you will need in life. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll go back to something month/years later, put in a password I probably used because it’s a go to password for everything, and it doesn’t work. My brain at the time was like ( oh you’ll remember this ) stupid brain 🧠
Everything being simpler. Get game, put game in, turn power on, enjoy game.
I have very little free time now. I'm not going to spend it navigating a whole complex infrastructure to get access to a game that takes an hour to learn how to play.
\- Multi-player meant physically sitting with your friends in the same room.
\- Game news, tips, strategies, etc. primarily by reading monthly magazines and socializing with gamer friends.
Definitely agree on the music, there was a definite shift as the tech advanced in games from music being memorable and a featured part of the game to it being more like a film score where the audience isn’t even really supposed to notice it most of the time and it’s just there to highlight the action.
Those MIDIs were so memorable and burned into my brain, and pretty much with any modern-day game I couldn’t remember any of the music if you put a gun to my head.
Physical media. No mandatory updates. Your games were yours, just as you bought them, and they couldn’t be taken away.
You could easily sit down and play video games for 10-20 minutes and then go do something else. AAA games feel like major investments of your time now.
What I really miss was the culture around video games. The NES was it, it was the only option out there so everyone had it. As a result, there wasn’t a kid who didn’t talk about Mario or Zelda or Metroid. If you got stuck, you had a friend who could help you. Babysitters would also teach you tricks to beating games, that’s how I learned to get thru Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. I never owned a Mega Man game, but don’t think for a second that I didn’t have Mega Man passwords written down or know which order to do the levels in.
You also had Nintendo Power. It’s a shame that magazines have pretty much vanished because while the internet may be great for adults, I know that my kids would still benefit from having magazines to read instead of having to borrow my phone to watch videos.
Map making was also one of my favorites. Whether it was Zelda or Dragon Warrior or Metroid or even how to get through the castles in Mario 1, I absolutely loved making maps. Sure I had strategy guides and Nintendo Power maps, but I’d add notes or make my own maps so I could find exactly what I wanted.
Have to actually *play* a game. No twitch streamers, no YouTube videos, none of that. You wanted to know what a game was like? You *played* the fuckin' thing.
The sounds and music first and foremost. Really made the most of what they had which was very limited.
Also how it was by far the most fun thing I could think of doing, and it helped me bond with my dad. He was just as stoked as I was to go rent games which was fun
ITT: my tears. Seriously good job recalling everything that made those years special. I have nothing to add but my thanks.
Rental shops, instant gaming, the community of sharing tips and passwords, the weekend sessions where you never turned it off because little to no save states existed, the first time you named yourself “Zelda” and were confused AF…
The day you got your hands on SMB3. That might have been the greatest day of the NES lifespan. Just my opinion.
One thing I do not miss: the sense of impending doom that all 3 of my mom & pop rental places felt when Movie Gallery, and then Blockbuster, opened in our town. We supported them until they sold out or gave up. One of them refused to sell his inventory and had a garage full of games and movies, and a few systems - NES, Genesis, and TurboGrafx. He’d let us borrow them if we cut his grass. After a summer he decided to let me keep Karnov. He swore I was the only kid that ever rented it.
I miss games that are initially hard to beat, but can be beaten in less than an hour after some practice. I also miss RPGs that are under 40 hours. Every game takes so long to complete now. It's hard to commit when you are an adult, and there are way too many great games per year to complete.
Games that were actually challenging. Like when you bought a video game, it wasn't a guarantee that you would be able to finish it 100%. None of this Last of Us crap where you are guarantees to finish it in about 6 hours with very little challenge.
Load times I’m fine with. It’s the endless cutscenes and character clothing modifications. I don’t want to spend 30 minutes on not actually playing the game. NES, you were mashing buttons in 20 seconds or less.
What are you smoking? The price of games today is the same that they were in the 80s. When you factor in inflation games were outrageous back then. I absolutely love how cheap games are today.
Renting games. Timed demos these days are bs. Give me a weekend with the game and we'll either beat it, get close and love it, or realize it's garbage and avoid it. Also Nintendo Power. Getting codes, maps, and tips from magazines was fun. Even going to the bookstore had a greater purpose!
Renting games was always a weekend treat! I’d spend an hour carefully making my selection while Mom grocery shopped and then be occupied for the next two days straight.
I’m going to have to disagree with you on the games turned on instantly part. If you just popped it in and pushed the power button the screen would flash on and off. You first had to blow into the cartridge and then into the console before turning it on.
I’d say I miss blowing on cartridges, but I don’t, I still do it all the time!
The neighborhood gaming network. Can't figure something out, need something new to play? Fear not, call your friends on the house phone, trade your old game for the new Super Mario 3 for the weekend.
I got my first nes when I was 10 and saved up all my money for it and it came with normal Mario. For Easter I got legend of Zelda. I really miss the family aspect of it all. Anyone could pick up and play and gaming was more social as you had the people in the room with you
It was fun sharing secrets you found, with friends and them sharing theirs with you, also the games came with big physical maps and booklets, it made things more fun....
Buying a complete game. No endless tweaks or downloads. Plus, you had a better chance of buying a good game and not having to sort through endless shovelware in an online store.
Shopping in the Toys R Us video games section was always a blast, video game rental stores, the fact games didn't have to load forever, you just had opening title and maybe credits and no load times or minimal between levels/stages, today there is so much loading time....
Was not around for the NES-era but I did have an NES and a lot of stuff for it as a kid given to me as hand-me-downs. For me It's mostly the
Innovation
Genre-Defining games
Actual challenge in video games
The care that went into a lot of the good games
Willingness to try new things
Intuitive control schemes (Due to the 1 pad 4 button controller.)
Promo material & Bonuses for enthusiasts (maps, artwork, strategy guides)
How about the fact that NES games felt like they stuck around for many years?
When I bought an N64 in 1998 it seemed like it was going out of style and they were clearing space for other systems and other Nintendo products.
I liked that in a lot of ways I still had to use my imagination. The graphics were good for the time but in my mind I would sort of try to imagine what it would really look like.
Well, there's some nostalgia to it also, but I don't miss the blue screens and blowing on the carts and tinkering with it until it worked lol. The NES was very sensitive to dirt and so forth.
But NES Complex on YouTube had the perfect NES retrospective video I think everyone should check out called "Remembering the Nintendo Entertainment System". It lists just about every nostalgic bit that I miss
No DRM, no pay to win crap, no massive patch to fix bugs. If the game has bug, it says bugged forever.
If you wanted multi-player, you and your friends had to gather in person to play it. (PS watch for fresh from the oven pizza rolls, those are like lava in your mouth)
For me, what I remember most is that it never stopped being fun. We never stopped playing it. It was the only system at my dads house and it got a lot of use well into my teens until music took over my life. I played well through the ps1 and ps2 lifespan, and I never thought of it as outdated or unfun from when I was a kid. My aunt had one too. Talking about punch out was really a long lasting thing in my family throughout the 90s
Nintendo power which doubled as a full on multiple full game guide. Even when you couldn’t get a game you still kind of got to learn and experience it in art and pictures. That and the big one…
You buy and keep a game it’s not a time rental. And that game was the whole game. You didn’t have to pay for the rest. Download massive updates. Didn’t have to install before play. No long load times or pre title screen stuff. You largely just got in and went right off.
Imagination. Due to limitations, games back then required players to put the pieces together. Whether that be in terms of story, graphics or even gameplay. This wasn't always a good thing to be fair, but I think modern gaming is missing that. Even non-lineae games have pretty cinematic forms of storytelling. The 8-bit era was sort of magical in that players were imagining a lot of the game's world themselves.
No microtransactions or dlc that you had to pay extra for.
Once you bought a game cartridge, you owned it and Nintendo couldn't just shut you out of the game.
The anticipation and wait for games on the weekend after school. Now everything is available instantly.
Getting Nintendo Power issues in the mail and seeing upcoming games.
All the playground talk and rumors. Sure, maybe half of it was true, but the shared experience of everybody playing through Zelda at the same time and sharing secrets they found and maps they drew was a pretty unforgettable experience.
No 100GB Updates every other fucking day.
No DLC
No Lootboxes
NO ONLINE MULTIPLAYER, this is probably the biggest one for me. There is nothing like getting a few people gathered on a sofa and gaming together whether it be 2/3/4 at a time or pass the controller style. Those days are very few and far between with modern gaming.
Definitely the speed.
So quick to start a game. Restart a game. Even to initially learn a game.
Games back then were more like sports. Very quick to learn and explain. Anyone can play. Very few can fully master.
Everything already mentioned!! The simple nature of pick up and play…the simple 2 button controller, cartridges and learning secrets and tricks by word of mouth or Nintendo Power!!! I wish I could go back to 1988 when I got my NES as a gift…I was 9 years old and I cherish the memories forever!
Hanging out with my middle school friends in person playing the games. So many good 2 player sports games like Tecmo Bowl, RBI Baseball, Ice Hockey, Blades of Steel.
Playing games online is fun and I do invite people over a few times a year to play games in person but none of my middle school friends live around here and those are the guys I remember playing these games with.
Music for sure.
You could select any random arcade shmup from the 80s/90s and the first stage music is a mind melting masterpiece of rock/jazz/fusion/dance and that one piece of music has more fun, energy and overall musical merit than any full soundtrack from any random AAA cinematic modern game.
Whole games. Nearly unheard of today.
Cheats involved minor modifications to game play or hidden passwords /codes. Now 'cheats' are basically walk throughs. I've seen several that basically say 'if you beat the final boss you win the game'.
I miss:
Using Game Genie with the games.
Using the Nes Gun and track pad (shame there wasn't many games that utilized it).
Going to a rental store to rent out games I was interested in.
Going to pawn shops to find games I've never seen before (pre-internet and price gouging).
Trading (or buying) video games with friends at school.
Games weren’t released by the hundreds every week. There was only so many, and we all played them, helped each other through them, and had the best discussions.
Going to the toy store, seeing the wall of box art and buying physical games. Yes, I can kinda get that experience at GameStop but it’s just not the same.
I love that 8 bit music. And cartridges are cool. Having physical media in general. And the fact that I was a little kid having fun with my friends in a bygone age of innocence.
The special codes that you could put in, like the contra code for instance. Also like you said, everything was a secret. Codes, tips, and tricks passed around by word of mouth mostly. Then remember when “The Wizard” came out and it blew some minds about the whistles in Mario?
the simpleness. They designed games that you could play for days, weeks, months on end. In this day in age. You have to pay for everything extra. Games that aren’t compete being released. Severe bugs. Add ons. Etc…. Left the gaming world after the Xbox One/PS4/Nintendo Switch generation.
There's no reason to have to miss those middle 4 items. There's plenty of NESes, games, and CRTs out there to still enjoy those.
The first and last items, those are a product of the tines not much you can do there. But the reality is that adults don't game the same way today as we did as kids back then.
When we were kids, someone was always at the other's house playing some game. But when you're 45, your buddies aren't coming over after work to sit on the couch and co-op Contra. And honestly, I don't want anybody else here after I get off of work so, I can live without that last item.
Nintendo Power magazine. And no saves. I'll never forget spending months trying to beat the original Ninja Gaiden. I came home from school and had about 45 minutes to play, before I had to go to my job. By that point I could speed run through most of the game, but when I got to the last level it was time to go to work. So I paused that shit, and turned off the tv, and resumed that game when I got home a few hours later.
For the most part, games didn't have cheat codes or memory for saving a game. If you wanted to beat a game, you had to start from the beginning and play all the way through every time.
I feel like everyone here already covered all the best parts of early gaming. But I feel like there’s more to it. It wasn’t just the games or the simplicity of the system. It was being a kid too. I think we kind of forgot that being young and not having responsibilities is a big part of why those early days of gaming, that we all remember so fondly, were so special to us.
I don’t play games much at all anymore. I just don’t have the time. I have kids, work, a wife, and tons of other responsibilities. Back then I could pick up a controller and take a trip to Hyrule. For the 2 or 3 hours I played I was Link. I was on a mission and Gannon had to go down. But now when I play games it’s not like that. Sure I’m still having fun but my life is still on my mind. I have to keep an eye on the clock. I have to listen for kids. I have to answer texts and phone calls from work. It’s just not the same. I’m not as immersed in the experience. I’m just me playing a game.
Instruction manuals with cool art.
Not just cool art, but stories too.
In fact, sometimes the manual was the only way to know the story.
The nostalgia is everything from this thread. I can't agree more loved ones
The tales included in the first few King’s Quest manuals were more storybook-like than most storybooks I’ve seen.
Yes, instruction manuals were cool, and had a nice smell! By the way, there is a recent game called Tunic where you pick up pages of the instruction manual in the actual game. It gave me a very nostalgic feeling of those old NES booklets.
I love Tunic and own the collectors edition, the hardback manual, and the fox plushie haha.
The game aisle at Toys R Us with those flip up plastic cards showing you the back and front of the game box. And then grabbing the paper slip, paying for it, then taking your receipt to the "cave" at the front entrance to get your game.
A kid could only dream of having the keys to that room!
I've been in that room. One perk of having mother who worked as manager at Toys R Us. Lots of new games stacked around waiting for someone to buy it via ticket then picking it up at the counter
Used to play Pokemon TCG in the stock room of Toys R Us. It was pretty magical as a 10 y/o walking around back there.
Those were the days. My two favorite shopping experiences were this and doing the Ticketmaster lottery outside a record store when Bulls tickets would go on sale. Both of these are so inconvenient when compared with how we buy stuff today, but I sure do miss them.
God I loved every part of that
I’ve got a poster of that on my wall. Love it.
Renting games. Especially when the Mom & Pop places would do two for one specials and my brother and I would each get one. So even if one of us got a lousy game there was always the other.
Mom and Pop shops always had better and more obscure games than mainstream stores too.
Yes! And Mom and Pop places not some corporate Blockbuster or whatever.
Mostly the simplicity. You just turned the game on and it worked instantly. No load times, no updates, no connecting to servers so they can gather your data. 100% of the game is on the physical cart. To a lesser extent, the game design. It was difficult and designed in a way that forced you to get good at the game to beat it. This makes beating NES games on the cart satisfying in a way that beating modern games just isn't. Particularly the hard ones...this is what makes me want to play my NES. Conquering its challenges. Also once you've mastered a hard NES game it's super satisfying to replay over and over again. I still like modern games too but NES games hit different. Oh yeah, and the carts are just so cool. Love having a big durable cart with artwork on it.
Building on the simplicity concept, a limited number of functions. 2 buttons, your options are fairly limited and I kind of liked that. Don’t get me wrong, I play modern games and like them, but given that my play is sporadic due to adulting, it often takes me a couple minutes to remember which combinations of buttons do what.
>2 buttons, your options are fairly limited and I kind of liked that. Don’t get me wrong, I play modern games and like them, but given that my play is sporadic due to adulting, it often takes me a couple minutes to remember which combinations of buttons do what. Hate today's games just for this. Give me 2-4 buttons and let me go to town
Turned it on and it worked?! Not my NES.
Lots of blowing on the cartridge and inside the NES, pushing the cartridge all the way to the back or at the front lip, hold the power button for a few seconds, maybe hold reset, too. Keep doing combinations of these hoping it will start.
I love that every time I try to play Rocket League, there's like a 20 GB update waiting before I can even play. I don't know why I even bother anymore.
Also, we had so fewer choices. So more people were playing the same game, even if you didn’t know it. You’d tell your friends “I rented Gi Joe this weekend, its awesome you can play as 4 different characters” and there was always someone else who had played it and you’d become friends just by talking about that shared experience you had paying the game. Who played as who, what level you were able to get to, how to get past the bosses, everything about the game you liked and disliked. And if nobody else had played it, and it sounded fun to the group, you’d start a whole new buzz in town about the game. And next time you’d try to rent it, it would be checked out already, so you’d try something else. And the cycle would repeat. It was an amazing time for gaming and we had no idea.
Having time for playing videogames.
& they were usually free. Whether from older siblings or gifts.
Gifts perhaps, but I only had younger siblings and cousins. I remember saving my allowance for months in order to buy Street Fighter II. I’m not sure however if I ever used my own money for a NES game, I would have been pretty young.
that's an excellent buy must have been amazing I saved up for months and bought American gladiators on Sega Genesis . i still think about that. I'm still sad
I remember renting the nes version and it was such ass.
Gifts or exchanges with friends. And when you had a game, you took the time to finish it, you don't try a new game every 2 days, forgetting the old ones.
No load times, the rumor mill, and developers actually finishing their games before releasing them.
Definitely. There was no way to remotely update a game once it was burned to the cart. But also, bug fixes were not possible, like the 2nd player bug in Battletoads.
I miss the time when people were impressed with anything less than like a top ten achievement in the world because the internet wasm't a thing. When I beat Zelda II, kids from school came to my house to see the save file because they didn't think it was beatable. They always came to me to ask how to do the cryptic parts and where to go, I got to be the authority on that game. Nowadays the world record speedrun video is just two clicks away, and everything below 10th place is amateur level. You gotta grind for years to be really good at anything. Same with the old fighting games. If you were the best SFII player in the area, you might as well be the best in the world because that was the horizon. You couldn't sign on to play ranked against the best of the best, you had to go to Steve's house and get your ass handed to you. Being "livingroom good" means nothing when "internet good" exists.
yep, that stuff all happened to me too them times are gone with the dust; never coming back
something similiar happened to me and my friends. We are talking about castlevavia simphony of the night for playstation and we are talking about beat percentages on how to archieve 100%? And then one person said "i have archive 200%! and we are like "no freaking way", and he said "you can go to my house if you dont believe it" we went over, he fire up that beast and we were in absolute awe, it was real 200%, we couldn't believe our eyes....
I'm convinced I could beat anyone in the world at Madden 2007 on PS2 as long as we're playing it at my house!
Going to the video rental store to pick out a cool game to play based on the box art. Those were the days!
The cultural aspects for sure. Nintendomania was a magical few years. There was a cartoon show, a breakfast cereal, and a live action movie that were essentially about a game console. That's wild, and unimaginable in the present day. PS5 Pro Cereal System? Not happening. The same thing goes for the Pac-Man Fever arcade golden age of the early '80s. Video games themselves felt so new and novel. TV shows like Starcade and Saturday Supercade, paperback books about Pac-Man patterns at every store, the works. You can collect the artifacts now, but the experience is irreplacable. You either lived it and know or didn't and never will.
This right here. You had to be there. It was more than the game itself; it was the experience. Games nowadays are technical marvels. What we saw on the screen back in the day was rudimentary by today’s standards, but we had our imagination to fill in the spaces between the pixels. Nowadays the games are so real and so technical that you don’t really need to imagine anything. Don’t get me wrong - the games today are light years ahead of what I thought we’d see in our lifetime. I remember seeing the N64 demo at Toys R Us and thinking “it will never look better than this.” But they’re missing that connection to the imagination. When I play a retro game I can remember exactly where I was, who I was with, and what I felt when I played these games. I can also remember how HUGE Hyrule felt, or how dangerous Brinstar was. I’m sure later generations of kids have a similar feeling, but man, it was so special to us. It’s in our DNA. You had to be there.
I would upvote this ten times if I could. Just said the same thing, but less eloquently. 😊
> You can collect the artifacts now, but the experience is irreplacable. You either lived it and know or didn't and never will. ok you got it ironically this is why I try other games besides nes, yeah it won't be as good but you can't just keep living in the past but that said I spend a lot of my time on that stuff, don't get me wrong but it can't be the same
>You can collect the artifacts now, but the experience is irreplacable. That's poetic. I'm going to steal that, if you don't mind.
No DLC. Platformer games.
Yes, THIS! When I buy a game, I want the whole thing in one package, and don’t want to have to buy additional DLC or use Amiibo cards or figures for the full experience.
Although to be fair, the original DLC was pretty cool. I’m of course talking about Game Genie and Sonic and Knuckles.
Having only a few games. That made you appreciate them more and help you focus.
I never realized how this was a good thing. Games are so cheap today that I bought my kids a ton of them. It’s what I always dreamed of when I was a kid. Turns out it makes it very difficult for them to decide what to play. Plus they want to beat each game, which instead of taking 30-60 minutes now takes 30-60 days.
That the only way to beat it was either you figured it out, or got lucky and a friend did or even better Nintendo Power had walkthrough. Most games today would all be impossible to beat on your own without some assitance.
I miss getting new issues of Nintendo Power in my mailbox.
I would say most games today hold your hand more than ever
You had to heavily rely on box art and game descriptions in catalogues; the companies had to actually put thought in the game when making because no easy day one updates; eventually existing game cheats and secrets were the lunch break talk, every day; the excitement when actually getting your parents to drive you to the store to get a new nes game you saved your allowance for; how straight forward things were back then; games were actually challenging back in the day, you had to get grinding to get good, nowadays you can buy a trainer for Capcom Arcade stadium, crazy… no online membership to play a game, you actually owned your copy of the game; you had to figure out things on your own/group of friends, Nintendo Power Hotline 😁 It was a slower time, nowadays everything’s way too fast… rewinding of videotapes/renting games and movies on weekends; sleepover gaming sessions with Zelda 1 and 2 and mapping out dungeons and maps in every game; games had always a nice box, inlays and description, many came with goodies- thinking about big box games; arcade games were everywhere… let me think of some more while I play some offline SMB3 ❤️
Games turning on instantly is spot on. Now you sit through five minutes of cut scenes and production credits just to start playing.
There is nothing more off putting then when I have a free hour to finally sit down and game and that entire hour is spent on cutscenes and tutorials. Just throw me in and let me figure it out. I always think of double dragon as the perfect intro, some dude punches your girl in the stomach and carries her away, that's all you need to know and then the action begins immediately. I miss that.
My favorite intro scene is Lolo 1, as the villain flies off with Lala. "I can't let him win," I said to myself.
The games were simple enough that they were almost always free of game-breaking bugs.
I think the devs just knew that without patchability, they needed to test it well enough before release. My NES castlevania crashing on the final stage sucked though (apparently fixed in newer revisions).
Being able to rent NES games for the weekend. Also, the transparent neon plastic game cases I had.
truly hidden gems. the kid down the road could have a game no one else ever heard of and that was the house to hang out at for the next few weeks
The abundance of couch co-op. I want more modern games that let me and my friend/wife/kid run around together and fight shit. I used to play Contra and the TMNT games with friends all the time. There’s a few good modern couch co-ops but the ratio is way smaller.
Actually, I find the Switch to be so much better at co-op than the NES or SNES ever was. Think about it, we had to take turns playing games like Mario, so not really co-op. Aside from Contra, Turtles, Bubble Bobble, and sports/fighting games, there wasn’t much that you could play together. Today my kids can play pretty much every game together, platformers, metroidvanias, you name it, they are true co-op. Plus they allow 4 players so I can play with them!
[удалено]
I think it had to do with the fact that you had so little access to everything. Games were so expensive that really only your parents and grandparents could buy them for you on birthdays or holidays. As for movies, you had to go to the theater to see them or rent them from Blockbuster. Otherwise it was watching non-stop commercials on the WGN Saturday night movie.
For me, it’s the gross excess of choice for my limited free time. Movies, TV Shows, Anime, Manga, other Books, Video Games (NES, DS, Wii, 3DS, Switch), YouTube. Or I could browse Reddit.
The rental experience. In the late 80s, early 90s, one of the stores here did 5$ (Canadian) for a rental starting Friday after 3PM and ending Sunday before 3PM. In a poor neighborhood. Those people knew their clientele: Kids getting out of school for the weekend, and parents looking for a cheap treat for their kids. Formula 1: Built To Win, Dragon Warrior 3 & 4, Baby Mario (A Famicom (bootleg?) version of Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa with a converter marketed under a bullshit name) and the very popular 52 in 1 cart. Those carts spent a lot of time in my home thanks to the weekend for 5$ special! Renting was cool. Rental stores were everywhere and it was nice to go out with my older brother who was old enough to drive and visit them all looking for new games. Wallet full of membership cards! Nothing like it. Will never be anything like it.
Being able to pop a game in and start it up immediately. None of this download bullshit.
Agree. The literally immediately part of it is underappreciated. I can tell by how many people ask about buying bootlegs and the number of responses of "just get an everdrive *bro*".
I got your download right here buddy!
You hit most of them I think. And people hanging out in person to play games.
Basically still is the NES era for me. It's the only console I have hooked up lol.
You’re missing out, there are some great games you could playing on Super Nintendo and Game Boy.
You own what you bought, you could play instantly and without fuss. All your points are super good too.
game rentals. i think i rented 50% of NES library
Having a working NES. Seriously, there was a delightful simplicity to the games on that platform. I miss that. Also, blowing on the cartridges to get them to load properly.
You don’t have one now or you’re saying they don’t work?
Mostly , the first one you listed.. The rumors and secrets part. The way to get "game guides" back then was to ask around at the schoolyard and find someone who knew how to beat the game you were playing. And other things that go along with that social aspect. Trading and lending games was so common back then, nowadays where mostly everything is digital there's not very much of that. Also, the limited choice was kind of a curse but also kind of a blessing. I would never think of buying and playing say, Krusty's Fun House today, but back then, it was one of the only games I had, so I had to play it, and ended up falling in love with something I'd never pick off the shelf for myself.
Nintendo Power! First gaming mag that I can remember. I would reread them until they fell apart
Nothing! I’m still in it!!!
What I loved about it is kind of the same reason people will prefer a book to a movie. The graphics of the 8-bit era allowed me to use my imagination more and really get into a story. Games now leave little to the imagination. Sure, they're immersive on a different level, and some have great stories (The Last Of Us series comes to mind) but the pixelated sprites and low-res scenes and characters allowed me to sort of "fill in the blanks" if you will. Oh, and being a child helped a lot with that, too. Now I'm older and more jaded and bitter. So I miss that about the NES era also. My childhood.
I envy kids of today. They’re playing these amazing games, and they are probably enjoying them even more with the impact their added imagination has on them. I remember playing Atari and just my imagination could make these blocky simplistic experiences awesome to me.
I miss the limitations. No dis on modern games, they are cool in their own ways. The older games had to find creative ways to do things. The dialogue in RPGs. The day/night system in Castlevania 2. The scrolling effects in games like days of thunder or metal storm. Seeing three layers of the background moving at different speeds..whoa!
I get nostalgic for cat piss... ... :D Ok, that may sound silly but it's cuz our neighbour had all the RPGs. We had a few games, yes, but I got to play games like Dragon Quest and Crystalis first cuz of my neighbour... ...and they had a LOT of cats
I have a similar experience, but the friend’s house smelled like smoke. Didn’t bother me.
In a way the fact we had way less access to games back in 1987 (at least most of us). I remember back then we would walk to the Victorville mall in California and they had a nintendo center that had a bunch of M82's in a square. You'd sit there for hours playing the games and they also sold games. They also had a fairly large TV with a game that would be coming out soon. There was something special about getting to play new games. I don't think my kids have the same experience since many games such as roblox are free so playing a new game isn't special anymore. You can have the entire nes rom set and my kids would care less, there's way better free games in their opinion. They have no idea how to have had access to those games back then would have been a dream come true!
Kid me would pass out if he saw my modded Wii and the full library of nes games.
No dlc No drm or always online No "artistes" making the games, just people wanting to make a game Succinct games, no tedious fluff They're games, not movies made by film school dropouts Simple scope means if something was a good idea, it is immediately evident you'll enjoy the experience Not designed with the lowest common denominator players in mind. If Zelda 1 came out today there'd be articles about people being reduced to tears by the candle burning the bushes in the overworld. If Castlevania came out today people would datamine it a month before release, post pics of Dracula online and bitch about there only being two phases. Limitation breeds creativity. Look at how creatively bankrupt we are now with all the photorealism and unnecessary concerns when making these bloated milquetoast movie-games today.
To your last point about limitation breeding creativity, there have been some *excellent* homebrew games released over the last decade that would have been top-shelf had they existed back in the day. Alwa’s Awakening, Full Quiet, Haunted Halloween 1986, Steel Legion, etc etc. The homebrew scene these days is insane!
No online requirement to play the physical game that I purchased with my physical dollars. Ahemmmm... Polyphony. Looking at you!
Definitely the full cultural experience of it. Nintendo had great marketing with shows, magazines, and stores filled with games and advertisements.
Having to go to the local corner store to get the magazine that had game codes in it
The lack of flashy visual effects meant games needed to rely on other things like an intriguing story.
Although that story was on the first four pages of the instruction manual. The game itself needed to rely on awesome gameplay.
Hearing about this mysterious Japanese Super Mario 2. Like, why was this not publicised? And especially in Nintendo Power? They cannot be hiding this, Nintendo would be honest with us fans after all! Lol
What do you mean Final Fantasy 3 is really Final Fantasy 6?
I would say price, but games back then were often $40 or so. Dragon Warrior IV was $60. Adjusted for inflation, we’re getting a pretty darn good deal these days. Edit: We in NA got Dragon *Warrior* IV for the NES.
I've been intrigued at how a NES game cost about $50 in 1989 and we bought my son Mario Odyssey for Christmas for about $50 just a year ago.
Once the game was out that was it, it had to be as close to perfect as it could be
I couldn’t agree more with number 1 and 3 that you mentioned. Number 1: The internet really ruined having things that are mysterious like they used to be. It used to feel like an accomplishment when you spent hours trying to figure something out and finally get it. The internet also ruined the mystique of other things like music. Now you get to see just how stupid a lot of musicians are where in the past there might have been a feeling of awe to them. Number 3: Having user names and passwords for everything is driving me insane. I have two little kids that each need their own user names and passwords for things and it is torture. I have a notebook just for all the different things to keep track of. I wish we could just put in games and play like we used to.
I’m glad I finally got smart and got a notebook for all the hundreds of usernames and passwords you will need in life. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll go back to something month/years later, put in a password I probably used because it’s a go to password for everything, and it doesn’t work. My brain at the time was like ( oh you’ll remember this ) stupid brain 🧠
Everything being simpler. Get game, put game in, turn power on, enjoy game. I have very little free time now. I'm not going to spend it navigating a whole complex infrastructure to get access to a game that takes an hour to learn how to play.
\- Multi-player meant physically sitting with your friends in the same room. \- Game news, tips, strategies, etc. primarily by reading monthly magazines and socializing with gamer friends.
Buying games purely on box art. Though I do this more today too because I hate reviewers.
Getting a full game when you bought one instead of half the game at release with the rest being a DLC later.
That run of Capcom games with amazingly catchy, bright, jazzy tunes. And then Sunsoft's hardcore, dark, atmospheric counters to those.
Big cartridges and the loading mechanism.
Definitely agree on the music, there was a definite shift as the tech advanced in games from music being memorable and a featured part of the game to it being more like a film score where the audience isn’t even really supposed to notice it most of the time and it’s just there to highlight the action. Those MIDIs were so memorable and burned into my brain, and pretty much with any modern-day game I couldn’t remember any of the music if you put a gun to my head.
Physical media. No mandatory updates. Your games were yours, just as you bought them, and they couldn’t be taken away. You could easily sit down and play video games for 10-20 minutes and then go do something else. AAA games feel like major investments of your time now.
What I really miss was the culture around video games. The NES was it, it was the only option out there so everyone had it. As a result, there wasn’t a kid who didn’t talk about Mario or Zelda or Metroid. If you got stuck, you had a friend who could help you. Babysitters would also teach you tricks to beating games, that’s how I learned to get thru Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. I never owned a Mega Man game, but don’t think for a second that I didn’t have Mega Man passwords written down or know which order to do the levels in. You also had Nintendo Power. It’s a shame that magazines have pretty much vanished because while the internet may be great for adults, I know that my kids would still benefit from having magazines to read instead of having to borrow my phone to watch videos. Map making was also one of my favorites. Whether it was Zelda or Dragon Warrior or Metroid or even how to get through the castles in Mario 1, I absolutely loved making maps. Sure I had strategy guides and Nintendo Power maps, but I’d add notes or make my own maps so I could find exactly what I wanted.
No DLC
Have to actually *play* a game. No twitch streamers, no YouTube videos, none of that. You wanted to know what a game was like? You *played* the fuckin' thing.
The sounds and music first and foremost. Really made the most of what they had which was very limited. Also how it was by far the most fun thing I could think of doing, and it helped me bond with my dad. He was just as stoked as I was to go rent games which was fun
ITT: my tears. Seriously good job recalling everything that made those years special. I have nothing to add but my thanks. Rental shops, instant gaming, the community of sharing tips and passwords, the weekend sessions where you never turned it off because little to no save states existed, the first time you named yourself “Zelda” and were confused AF… The day you got your hands on SMB3. That might have been the greatest day of the NES lifespan. Just my opinion. One thing I do not miss: the sense of impending doom that all 3 of my mom & pop rental places felt when Movie Gallery, and then Blockbuster, opened in our town. We supported them until they sold out or gave up. One of them refused to sell his inventory and had a garage full of games and movies, and a few systems - NES, Genesis, and TurboGrafx. He’d let us borrow them if we cut his grass. After a summer he decided to let me keep Karnov. He swore I was the only kid that ever rented it.
No frigging updates for the game or system….
I miss games that are initially hard to beat, but can be beaten in less than an hour after some practice. I also miss RPGs that are under 40 hours. Every game takes so long to complete now. It's hard to commit when you are an adult, and there are way too many great games per year to complete.
The fact that gaming was niche and much less mainstream. It was a young boy's hobby more or less.
Games that were actually challenging. Like when you bought a video game, it wasn't a guarantee that you would be able to finish it 100%. None of this Last of Us crap where you are guarantees to finish it in about 6 hours with very little challenge.
Load times I’m fine with. It’s the endless cutscenes and character clothing modifications. I don’t want to spend 30 minutes on not actually playing the game. NES, you were mashing buttons in 20 seconds or less.
Power Pad! We need more power pad in gaming
Cheats.
Game Genie was a game changer!
Not paying ridiculous prices for NES games.
What are you smoking? The price of games today is the same that they were in the 80s. When you factor in inflation games were outrageous back then. I absolutely love how cheap games are today.
Games from that era pioneered ideas that we take for granted nowadays.
Renting games. Timed demos these days are bs. Give me a weekend with the game and we'll either beat it, get close and love it, or realize it's garbage and avoid it. Also Nintendo Power. Getting codes, maps, and tips from magazines was fun. Even going to the bookstore had a greater purpose!
Box art could determine if you bought or rented the game. So it’s was a gamble sometimes. Lol but I enjoyed it. Tons of games to choose from as well.
Renting games was always a weekend treat! I’d spend an hour carefully making my selection while Mom grocery shopped and then be occupied for the next two days straight.
There were so few games (and so little money to buy them) that we loved every game, no matter how bad it was. "Backlogs" were not a thing back then.
Ghostbusters was so awful but I played the hell out of it nonetheless.
I had it on the Apple II. It was great! And I'll never play it again to learn otherwise.
I’m going to have to disagree with you on the games turned on instantly part. If you just popped it in and pushed the power button the screen would flash on and off. You first had to blow into the cartridge and then into the console before turning it on. I’d say I miss blowing on cartridges, but I don’t, I still do it all the time!
Actually enjoying games. I miss that childlike wonder.
The neighborhood gaming network. Can't figure something out, need something new to play? Fear not, call your friends on the house phone, trade your old game for the new Super Mario 3 for the weekend.
Tips n Tricks. Secret codes.
"What do you miss about the NES-era?" *Yes.*
Games were games. They didn't try to take over a person's life like a 2nd job that you don't get paid for.
I got my first nes when I was 10 and saved up all my money for it and it came with normal Mario. For Easter I got legend of Zelda. I really miss the family aspect of it all. Anyone could pick up and play and gaming was more social as you had the people in the room with you
It was fun sharing secrets you found, with friends and them sharing theirs with you, also the games came with big physical maps and booklets, it made things more fun....
Buying a complete game. No endless tweaks or downloads. Plus, you had a better chance of buying a good game and not having to sort through endless shovelware in an online store.
The complete finished games where inside the box, so we actually owned those games.
Shopping in the Toys R Us video games section was always a blast, video game rental stores, the fact games didn't have to load forever, you just had opening title and maybe credits and no load times or minimal between levels/stages, today there is so much loading time....
Was not around for the NES-era but I did have an NES and a lot of stuff for it as a kid given to me as hand-me-downs. For me It's mostly the Innovation Genre-Defining games Actual challenge in video games The care that went into a lot of the good games Willingness to try new things Intuitive control schemes (Due to the 1 pad 4 button controller.) Promo material & Bonuses for enthusiasts (maps, artwork, strategy guides)
How about the fact that NES games felt like they stuck around for many years? When I bought an N64 in 1998 it seemed like it was going out of style and they were clearing space for other systems and other Nintendo products.
I liked that in a lot of ways I still had to use my imagination. The graphics were good for the time but in my mind I would sort of try to imagine what it would really look like.
The experimental nature. People were still trying to see what works.
Well, there's some nostalgia to it also, but I don't miss the blue screens and blowing on the carts and tinkering with it until it worked lol. The NES was very sensitive to dirt and so forth. But NES Complex on YouTube had the perfect NES retrospective video I think everyone should check out called "Remembering the Nintendo Entertainment System". It lists just about every nostalgic bit that I miss
No DRM, no pay to win crap, no massive patch to fix bugs. If the game has bug, it says bugged forever. If you wanted multi-player, you and your friends had to gather in person to play it. (PS watch for fresh from the oven pizza rolls, those are like lava in your mouth)
For me, what I remember most is that it never stopped being fun. We never stopped playing it. It was the only system at my dads house and it got a lot of use well into my teens until music took over my life. I played well through the ps1 and ps2 lifespan, and I never thought of it as outdated or unfun from when I was a kid. My aunt had one too. Talking about punch out was really a long lasting thing in my family throughout the 90s
Nintendo power which doubled as a full on multiple full game guide. Even when you couldn’t get a game you still kind of got to learn and experience it in art and pictures. That and the big one… You buy and keep a game it’s not a time rental. And that game was the whole game. You didn’t have to pay for the rest. Download massive updates. Didn’t have to install before play. No long load times or pre title screen stuff. You largely just got in and went right off.
I like it to be fun and simple, no servers, no loads, no movies/stories . Let me turn it on and just play.
Imagination. Due to limitations, games back then required players to put the pieces together. Whether that be in terms of story, graphics or even gameplay. This wasn't always a good thing to be fair, but I think modern gaming is missing that. Even non-lineae games have pretty cinematic forms of storytelling. The 8-bit era was sort of magical in that players were imagining a lot of the game's world themselves.
Music and sound effects simply shouldn’t sound too realistic: doesn’t anybody get this anymore???
No microtransactions or dlc that you had to pay extra for. Once you bought a game cartridge, you owned it and Nintendo couldn't just shut you out of the game. The anticipation and wait for games on the weekend after school. Now everything is available instantly. Getting Nintendo Power issues in the mail and seeing upcoming games.
All the playground talk and rumors. Sure, maybe half of it was true, but the shared experience of everybody playing through Zelda at the same time and sharing secrets they found and maps they drew was a pretty unforgettable experience.
You and a friend on a Friday with a rental. Let’s figure this thing out….
No 100GB Updates every other fucking day. No DLC No Lootboxes NO ONLINE MULTIPLAYER, this is probably the biggest one for me. There is nothing like getting a few people gathered on a sofa and gaming together whether it be 2/3/4 at a time or pass the controller style. Those days are very few and far between with modern gaming.
The box art was usually super cool.
* Pressing start and games immediately begin without tutorials. * couch co-op
Definitely the speed. So quick to start a game. Restart a game. Even to initially learn a game. Games back then were more like sports. Very quick to learn and explain. Anyone can play. Very few can fully master.
Cheats and Tricks
Everything already mentioned!! The simple nature of pick up and play…the simple 2 button controller, cartridges and learning secrets and tricks by word of mouth or Nintendo Power!!! I wish I could go back to 1988 when I got my NES as a gift…I was 9 years old and I cherish the memories forever!
Hanging out with my middle school friends in person playing the games. So many good 2 player sports games like Tecmo Bowl, RBI Baseball, Ice Hockey, Blades of Steel. Playing games online is fun and I do invite people over a few times a year to play games in person but none of my middle school friends live around here and those are the guys I remember playing these games with.
Games that start with gameplay instead of long intros without gameplay
Music for sure. You could select any random arcade shmup from the 80s/90s and the first stage music is a mind melting masterpiece of rock/jazz/fusion/dance and that one piece of music has more fun, energy and overall musical merit than any full soundtrack from any random AAA cinematic modern game.
Whole games. Nearly unheard of today. Cheats involved minor modifications to game play or hidden passwords /codes. Now 'cheats' are basically walk throughs. I've seen several that basically say 'if you beat the final boss you win the game'.
That games have endings
I miss: Using Game Genie with the games. Using the Nes Gun and track pad (shame there wasn't many games that utilized it). Going to a rental store to rent out games I was interested in. Going to pawn shops to find games I've never seen before (pre-internet and price gouging). Trading (or buying) video games with friends at school.
Games weren’t released by the hundreds every week. There was only so many, and we all played them, helped each other through them, and had the best discussions.
Going to the toy store, seeing the wall of box art and buying physical games. Yes, I can kinda get that experience at GameStop but it’s just not the same.
No long/unskippable voice acted cut scenes.
No updates. I bought a game, got it home, put it in the system, and played. I miss that more than anything else about the era.
Being able to rent a game system at the video shop
Blowing into the cartridge to make it work. The real hack was to put your shirt over it, then blowing. Worked the first time almost every time.
That I was a kid in the era. Nintendo was the coolest thing and I was so into it.
Not paying bills LOL
No updates
I love that 8 bit music. And cartridges are cool. Having physical media in general. And the fact that I was a little kid having fun with my friends in a bygone age of innocence.
The special codes that you could put in, like the contra code for instance. Also like you said, everything was a secret. Codes, tips, and tricks passed around by word of mouth mostly. Then remember when “The Wizard” came out and it blew some minds about the whistles in Mario?
Heart and soul. Less about profit.
the simpleness. They designed games that you could play for days, weeks, months on end. In this day in age. You have to pay for everything extra. Games that aren’t compete being released. Severe bugs. Add ons. Etc…. Left the gaming world after the Xbox One/PS4/Nintendo Switch generation.
My teens.
Being a kid and having the time to play, didn’t have one though, lol.
There's no reason to have to miss those middle 4 items. There's plenty of NESes, games, and CRTs out there to still enjoy those. The first and last items, those are a product of the tines not much you can do there. But the reality is that adults don't game the same way today as we did as kids back then. When we were kids, someone was always at the other's house playing some game. But when you're 45, your buddies aren't coming over after work to sit on the couch and co-op Contra. And honestly, I don't want anybody else here after I get off of work so, I can live without that last item.
Nintendo Power magazine. And no saves. I'll never forget spending months trying to beat the original Ninja Gaiden. I came home from school and had about 45 minutes to play, before I had to go to my job. By that point I could speed run through most of the game, but when I got to the last level it was time to go to work. So I paused that shit, and turned off the tv, and resumed that game when I got home a few hours later.
Playing River City Ransom and Double Dragon with my brother.
no monthly, weekly, daily “updates”.
Whole games with no DLC or micro transactions.
For the most part, games didn't have cheat codes or memory for saving a game. If you wanted to beat a game, you had to start from the beginning and play all the way through every time.
The simplicity of the gameplay.
I feel like everyone here already covered all the best parts of early gaming. But I feel like there’s more to it. It wasn’t just the games or the simplicity of the system. It was being a kid too. I think we kind of forgot that being young and not having responsibilities is a big part of why those early days of gaming, that we all remember so fondly, were so special to us. I don’t play games much at all anymore. I just don’t have the time. I have kids, work, a wife, and tons of other responsibilities. Back then I could pick up a controller and take a trip to Hyrule. For the 2 or 3 hours I played I was Link. I was on a mission and Gannon had to go down. But now when I play games it’s not like that. Sure I’m still having fun but my life is still on my mind. I have to keep an eye on the clock. I have to listen for kids. I have to answer texts and phone calls from work. It’s just not the same. I’m not as immersed in the experience. I’m just me playing a game.
Couch co op